Doomsday Book

By: Connie Willis

Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin

Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the most respected and awarded of all contemporary science-fiction writers, Connie Willis repeatedly amazes her many admiring fans with her ability to create vivid characters in unusual situations. With Doomsday Book, she takes listeners on a thrilling trip through time to discover the things that make us most human.

For Oxford student Kivrin, traveling back to the 14th century is more than the culmination of her studies - it's the chance for a wonderful adventure. For Dunworthy, her mentor, it is cause for intense worry about the thousands of things that could go wrong. When an accident leaves Kivrin trapped in one of the deadliest eras in human history, the two find themselves in equally gripping - and oddly connected - struggles to survive.

Deftly juggling stories from the 14th and 21st centuries, Willis provides thrilling action - as well as an insightful examination of the things that connect human beings to each other.

©1992 Connie Willis (P)2000 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 1993
• Nebula Award, Best Novel, 1992

"Ms. Willis displays impressive control of her material; virtually every detail introduced in the early chapters is made to pay off as the separate threads of the story are brought together." (The New York Times Book Review)
"A stunning novel that encompasses both suffering and hope....The best work yet from one of science fiction's best writers." (The Denver Post)

intriguing blend of history and science fiction

I downloaded this book after hearing an interview on Audible. I was very pleased with my selection and found it hard to stop listening! Both the writer and the reader made the characters and place come alive.
If you like history, even if the Middle Ages isn't your area of expertise, you will like this story.

This is a fine story if you don’t like SciFi or editing

First, this is not a SciFi or fantasy book, excepting a few plot devices. It’s essentially our world with a few extra technologies.

The performance was very good, and a few characters were well written. The others were just objects to be acted upon, and had no arc to speak of.

Mostly though, it was overly long by at least half. Maybe even more.

A Literary Time Travel Triumph

Any additional comments?

Connie Willis is a great novelist, not just a genre writer. The Doomsday Book effectively weaves together a strand of the future and a strand of the past for two compelling adventures in one solid frame.

Though some of the future world-building is less imaginative than is her treatment of the Middle Ages (especially where high-tech communication, Centers for Disease Control, and pedestrian travel are concerned), both stories wrap around each other to make you care very much what happens at "the drop" in the time travel net--and to everyone involved in the expedition. Actually, other than the time travel expertise, most of the "future" reads like the present--but the ability to drop historians into different epochs and then retrieve them makes up for that deficiency. While the scientists of the "future" are trying to track down the origin of a new flu variant, the heroine is lost in a small English town in the Middle Ages, and her colleagues battle the laws of physics, a fatal flu, and each other to find her and bring her back. The details of life in the Middle Ages were especially compelling, especially as people begin to lose hope and wonder if the heroine will ever return to her "pre-drop" life. Her efforts to fit in, her fears that she will die before she can find the point of return, and her constant uncertainty about the mores of the people she is living among turn out to be surprisingly suspenseful (will she be burnt as a witch...cast out and abandoned...sent to a convent for the rest of her life?). Her relationships with her hosts' children and the parish priest are especially moving, and Jenny Sterlin does a great job of sounding like a tired, grouchy little girl, a lecherous overweight nobleman pawing his 12-year old "fiancee," as well as a devout yet uneducated priest, casting a spell that lasts for over 26 hours of reading time--quite a feat!

I enjoyed the book even more than I expected to--definitely worth a credit.

Horrible narrator. Like nails on a chalkboard.

Might be a good story but gawd. Who could get past that horrid performance? Can't stand it.

Great Book - Great Reading

As the first of the series - that I read in the wrong order, this was great. The reading was excellent and the story still great. I really recommend this audio book.

Boring Story

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Narrator was fine. Story was not intriguing.

Would you ever listen to anything by Connie Willis again?

Maybe. Her later books in the series have high ratings.

Did Doomsday Book inspire you to do anything?

No

The best narrative performance I've heard

The book has won many awards for good reason, but it's not really my preferred sci-fi. What made the experience of reading this audio version one of the best yet, for me, was Jenny Sterlins narrative performance. She made the characters alive, very distinct from each other, and gave them believability. I believe that her performance made the story even more moving than it would have been had I simply read the txt of it.

Well done.

It took a little while

..for me to get into this one - the descriptions of 'modern day' feel so 1950's and a bit shallow! I feel inclined to read more about the Black Death now - the action in that period is great fun. Couldn't wait to get in the car and find out what happened next.

Warning! This book is not about 1066 and all that!

Any additional comments?

This is not a fun book. I will not read it again and I would not have bought it had I known the subject, but I gave it 5 stars because it deserves those stars. It's a successful attempt at portraying both futuristic and past plagues. Specifically, the Black Plague. It's a relatively light portrayal but it was painful nonetheless. At one point I became tired of listening to the same thoughts circling over and over through the heroine's mind, but upon reflection I decided that was how someone in those circumstances would think. It was easier to accept the difficulties facing our futuristic hero, because they were ones we could have today. And, according to my church choir director, the depiction of high-caliber bell ringers sounded uncomfortably close to the truth.

Way too long

Story dragged, details of life in the middle ages were wonderful, but there was so much other crap to wade through.